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Dr Joya John has earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. She is passionate about how literary and cultural studies can respond to new challenges in the Indian subcontinent and more globally. Her research has so far focused on issues of environment and ecology in Indian fiction. She is interested in issues of energy, mining, waste, as well as the changing landscape of activism around environmental issues and climate change. She believes that Literature can bring valuable insights to environmental issues that are often dominated by scientific and policy approaches. She holds both Master’s and MPhil degrees in English Literary Studies from the Delhi University.
She is currently working on academic articles on issues of energy security and access in Hindi fiction, and the depiction of Adivasi communities and the environment in contemporary novels set in Jharkhand. She has presented her work at the Association for Asian Studies, European Conference of South Asian Studies, the Annual South Asia Conference at Madison, and the American Comparative Literature Association. She has published on issues of sexual harassment at the workplace, Dalit drama, and autoethnography in contemporary Dalit thought.
Joya has over six years teaching experience at the Delhi University, where she taught courses on Indian Writing in Translation, Realism and the Novel, and European Drama. During graduate school in the United States, she has taught academic and professional writing and courses on environmental issues and globalisation in South Asia. When not teaching or researching, she is interested in stand-up comedy and believes irony, satire and comedy have tremendous critical power in contemporary India. She is interested in developing audio content and believes podcasts are the future.
Research
Publications
1. “The American Indian Adivasi: Writing Adivasi Indigeneity in Ranendra’s Lords of the Global Village” in South Asian Review, Special Issue (Fall issue, 2021)
2. “Adivasi Poetry: The Poetics of Indigeneity in Contemporary India.” In The Oxford Handbook of Modern Indian Literature. Edited by Anjali Nerlekar and Ulka Anjaria. Oxford University Press.
3. “Multilingualism, Literary Ecologies and the Scales of Environmental World Literature.” Journal of World Literature 11, 3 (2026): 403-421.
Public Writing and Engagements
Essays
Research in Progress
Book Manuscript
Scale: Stories of Distance, Power, and Belonging
Current Research Project
Elemental Regimes: Heat, Water, and the Literary Life of Infrastructure in Modern India
Awards, Grants and Felloships
2025 Institute of World Literature Balzan Fellowship
2024–2025 ICAS:MP Short-Term Fellowship for Book Manuscript Development
Teaching Modules
